


i don't want to think about you but i do, i do, i do

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Strange Empire (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:07:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: with your name in my throat, i swallow
Relationships: Kat Loving/Isabelle Slotter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	i don't want to think about you but i do, i do, i do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SugarFey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/gifts).



The new mine is sunk before Kat comes back to Janestown. She knees her horse forward, feeling a rush of something, maybe home, maybe regret. Miners and Chinamen flowing through the streets, Mrs. Briggs and Fiona running the cribs and pouring the whiskey, Mrs. Blithely with a sharp gasp as she looks up from her sketchbook. "You're back!"

Kat nods, tips her hat. "Aiming to find my girls." There'll be other tasks to master, ends to wrap up, but this is the first. 

"Oh," Rebecca says, her gaze off into nothing. It's no sign of things to come, but doesn't stop Kat's meagre last meal from flipping in her stomach. "They'll be up at the house. With Mrs. Slotter. Ah. Mrs. Smythe." Rebecca twists her pencil from one hand to the other. The months haven't changed her, certainly not as much as the last days with Slotter did. She wears pants now, under her doctoring apron. "Did you know she is wed? I'm not… _certain_ of the legality, but Mr. Slotter, Cornelius, well. You left so quickly, I--" Her voice cuts out, mid-thought, like she's wont to do. "You'll stay? I mean. You're back?" Fiona still stares from across the way, wanting an answer just as much, perhaps. 

"Just looking for my girls."

*

Robin opens the door. In the pause before she shouts "Ma!" relief washes through Kat. Her face, her clothing, her stance, all have stayed the same. The nightmare of finding grown women on her return, women hardened and angry, or women lost, starts to fade. 

Then Kelly's come too, and arms are around Kat and warm bodies pressed close. Kat's eyes well up, and she isn't ashamed of it. 

"Didja find 'im?" Kelly asks, but Robin already knows, reading it in the ether, and touches her sister on the shoulder in a signal. 

"I tried to," Kat says, knowing she can't say the rest of it, not yet. She'll tell her girls about the nights and the trail and the ocean on nights when they can't sleep, when they're curled up together. They'll mourn together, Kat's heart is sore of doing it on her own. Robin squeezes her hand, filling her up with warm she hasn't known in months.

And then, Isabelle Slotter is in the hallway, a silhouette of skirts and curls piled as high as ever. Her hands are flat against the fabric, smoothing it. Her mouth is softer, her gaze less severe than Kat remembered. "Mrs. Loving," she says, "I do hope you'll join us for supper."

*

"Wei Zhou," Isabelle calls inside, "we have a guest." 

The table is set for only three. "You've kept my girls. Safe." The thought spreads in Kat's chest and twines around the picture of Isabelle held here. It changes her.

Isabelle sits. "The company has been welcome." Her expression doesn't betray any warmth, but her voice does, softer than usual. There aren't many who willingly associate with a female business owner, not one with one dead husband, and another gone away." Kelly drags another chair to the table, and Robin sits. Their places are to Isabelle's right and left. No head to this table, the leaves have been pulled to make it a circle. Kat joins them. Just sitting somewhere not a horse or a log feels strange. Wei Zhou, a new face, brings out another plate. The fare isn't impressive, a stew, fresh bread, but for she's been making do with meat on a spit and gathered berries. Her stomach rumbles. 

The last she and her girls sat like this, served warm food, it was with Caleb. Before that, with Jeremiah. Strange echoes. Fracturing.

The girls are quiet, and then full of bubbling-over words, barely choking down food before chattering about life in Janestown, now the mine is up and a real city's started taking root. A miner, in from across vast Canada, asked for Kelly's hand, being as she's the elder, but experience has proved a guide and she turned him down. "You shoulda seen his face, Ma!" Robin crows, pushing to her feet before a glance from Isabelle reminds her of her manners. 

Kelly, for once, is laughing too. "If he weren't so ugly, I mighta said yes."

"Not without your mother's say," Isabelle says, quiet, and with no more explanation. Kat gives her a curious look--such a change, can she trust it? 

Dinner is done, and the dishes quietly removed from the table. 

"You'll stay here tonight, at the house." It isn't a question, but Kat still finds her shaking her head in answer. An answer Isabelle doesn't accept. Stubborn, so stubborn, still. "The girls have made a home for themselves in the cribs and don't have the room."

The look Kelly shoots Robin indicates otherwise, or at least the possibility of otherwise. 

"I'll make do in the cribs," Kat says, wiping her chin clear of any remaining trace of dinner. 

Isabelle's voice is firm, the tone echoed from traces of memory, and from dreams, and nightmares too. "You'll do no such thing."

*

"A bath, Wei Zhou," Isabelle calls down the stairs as she gestures for Kat to continue up them. 

"Traded one slave for another, Mrs. Slotter?"

"Mrs. Smythe, I'll thank you." Smiles. "Wei Zhou is paid well, from my pocket. He sends my money to his family, and they are grateful that he won't die in the mine. He hasn't the stomach or the lungs for work underground."

The servant enters, carrying a large cauldron wrapped in thick linens in his arms, his face shining and red with the heat. He spills the contents into the tin bath, and the steam alone makes Kat want to swoon. She's no delicate, but the months of wind and chill have left her wanting. 

Wanting what her faux-wife now offers. 

Her hand is on the lip of the tub, and without pretense or overture, Isabelle says, "You've abandoned your Jeremiah, then?"

Kat doesn't give her the satisfaction of hesitation. Continues to unbutton her blouse, slide the dust-worn material over her shoulders. "No decision to make, not standing at the Pacific, no trail to trace. Abandon a man, can defend himself, care for himself, or abandon my daughters, need raising. He'd do the same." She steps out of her boots, calloused feet screaming at the freedom. Shoves pants down to the floor where they pool at her feet. Isabelle's gaze flicks over her underthings, judging them, to be sure. The whites are dingy, torn, stained. "Your Mr. Ling?"

Isabelle ignores the question. "Your lover in buckskin?"

Lover? Supposing her girls got to talking too much at this big house. Kat could lie, but shrugs, sets her chin. "Gone to Washington, make nice with the government." Doesn't say: he left no word at Station House, left nothing but word of a promise. 

"He's abandoned you, then, it would be fair to surmise. As my Mr. Ling has abandoned me for Cornelius's money." Isabelle brushes a fingertip across the surface of the water, sending ripples across the tub. She touches Kat's cheek with wet. "Remove those as well. I'll send them with Wei Zhou for the washing." She tugs the sleeve of Kat's chemise, pulls it down off the shoulder, traces the water there, too. 

*

Isabelle Slotter kisses like a wolf, devouring.

Kat's hips pitch forward and her eyes roll back and she thinks, my wife, she thinks, Isabelle, and she moans, low, like the wind cross the plains on a chill night.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and artistic summary from lyrics to Vampire Weeknight by Jenny Owen Youngs, which served as sonic inspiration


End file.
